


Team Turf Wars

by chicagotime



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Turf War, gangster au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:21:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27843637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicagotime/pseuds/chicagotime
Summary: In this gangster world, the Crabs have left their normal territory in search of a better challenge. The Tokyo Lift try to fill the hole they left behind.
Kudos: 4





	Team Turf Wars

**Author's Note:**

> I have one speciality, and it’s 1950s thembos.

In New York, we see a gang known only as the Crabs. They’re a long way from home, and they know it, but they’re trying to shake off the nostalgia by engaging in literally anything else. Like this barfight they’re currently in. And just look at them go! Fragments of peanut and crab shells fly everywhere as fists and claws and feet and hooves(?) strike each other over and over again, a huge dust cloud conveniently covering this brawl, hiding any interesting details at all from sight.

Because this isn’t about them. This is about the place they left behind, and what comes next.

We leave the nondescript bar and soar over to an unnamed town of unimaginable magnitude, lights sparkling like flecks of golden paint on a pitch black canvas. Even from here, you can tell that all is still. Or at least, it seems to be.

Zooming in on a certain block of run-down apartments, we see an earnest party from people who are just trying their best. Posters about previous parties and birthdays and bake sales and good reports cards coat the walls, illuminated by cheap glow sticks grasped firmly by a throbbing mass of sweaty, energetic people who are clearly trying their best to keep up with the nightcore music playing, despite being on their fifth-to-eighteenth energy drink, depending on their age. Moving down to the basement of the building, we see a damp room lit by a single lightbulb that winks like a sleep-deprived cyclops, occasionally bothering to illuminate a man of alabaster skin and pinstriped clothes sitting at a desk, head in his hands, surrounded by papers smothered in red ink and a smashed piggy bank with a few crumpled notes inside. Most of them are IOUs.

On the other side of the city, the camera shows us the height of luxury. Glass doors with engraved golden handles swing open of their own accord to reveal Hermes’ Envy, a treasure trove of sneakers of every size, shape, and colour. Here, every brand intermingles with one another, Nike cordially shaking hands with Adidas while gold-plated Crocs and Sketchers make out in the back. Workers line the walls, each one in an identical navy blue suit and yellow tie, smiling like statues and holding scanners of the purest white. Yet despite the allure of the shoes, each one of them the pair you’ve always wanted, you hesitate. You have a feeling, deep in your gut where your soul truly resides, that These Are Not Your Kicks. You stare at the doors in the back. You do not wish to know what lies behind them.

Now we move down, deep down underground, to a land of fire and brimstone almost as far as the eye can see. Marble mansions circle a village of stone cottages as various demons go about their business, carefully avoiding a fountain of sparkling water in the middle of it all, the liquid falling from a statue of an axolotl with an open mouth. We go further, to a large palace that towers above it all, built with gold, gemstones of every kind unlovingly scattered across it. We enter it, passing large and extravagant rooms that only you can imagine before we arrive at the Throne Room. Decked in velvet drapes and the longest tassels ever, the room was seemingly built with the idea that the owner would choose the furnishings. But it’s surprisingly bare, save for an extravagant throne, engraved with screaming souls of every description, and an incredibly bored man with four diamonds for pupils and a crown that is amazingly crooked. He stares into the distance, willing the seconds to pick up the pace, because they aren’t getting paid enough by these rich bastards to move this slowly.

We follow his gaze, across this land of heat, before arriving at a… grassy meadow? And a... firepole. We travel up this firepole and see, for the first time, ordinary people doing ordinary things in an ordinary firehouse. Some are chatting, some are arguing, some are playing on soaking wet video game consoles. But all of them seem to be happy, except for one. Facing a person with cat-ear headphones babble on about something he doesn’t care about, a cloud of violence contemplates his home and his king, while spectral figures inside him meet their inevitable end. Finally, mercifully, an alarm bell rings, and everyone scrambles for their equipment before sliding down the pole and seeing a wildfire spread out before them, a hungry beast that can never eat its fill of ash and smoke. We see these firefighters do what some of them do best, while a vault of insurance papers rest soundly in a vault above them, embellished with the symbol of a flower.

From this vault, we leave the building, and head downtown to a cafe of sorts, if you could call a castle that has been turned into a coffee shop a cafe. Even in the dead of night, some customers are still sitting at half-filled tables, while waiters and waitresses ‘accidentally’ spill coffee on them, starting a slow-burn romance that will last forever. Or until they stop buying coffee. Either one. At the back of the store is the rest of the castle, a physically impossible space of infinite rooms and a slight, yet permanent, smell of roses. In one of these rooms, a dining room to be exact, we see more than a baker’s dozen of knights, squires, kings, queens, and monarchs staring with varying amounts of dread at a single, throbbing pie in the middle of the dining table. 

In this cafe, we cut from the music playing as ambiance to hardcore rock, metal, and baroque happening all at once, in the middle of a concert. Blinding stage lights don’t seem to phase the performers (all eighteen of them) as they pluck, strum, struck, and plum a variety of instruments. The crowd cheers for some reason. They knew what they were paying for, and they’re getting it in spades here tonight. One audience member, however, is silent. They stare with eyes of obols for a few more seconds, an unreadable expression on their face, before turning away and leaving.

There are, of course, many more teams present here, but they will become more important later. For now, let’s look at who’s important right now.

In the wreckage of what was a fishmonger's shop, bedecked in plastic crab claws, enters a new group of people. They’re muscled, smiling, and naive overall as they step into the shop, the claws rising to grant them entrance before turning into a pair of dumbbells. The sign on the front of the shop, which once read ‘Baltimore’s Finest’, now morphs and twists, now proudly proclaiming ‘LIFT YOUR WAY TO THE TOP!!!’

A new challenger approaches. Let’s see how they fare.


End file.
